The Chinese diaspora has spread all over the world, but is there anyplace they’ve avoided?
My WAG would be some industrial city in Siberia.
Aka, the area next to China? When there are quite a few Chinese immigrients and also natives?:dubious:
Sub Saharan Africa maybe.
By various accounts I have heard, actual Chinese (as in, you know, in China) restaurants would not be recognizable to Americans, nor would American-style Chinese restaurants nor the cuisine they serve be recognizable in China. (Although I’d guess that major cosmopolitan metropolises like Beijing would have American-style Chinese restaurants now.)
China’s a big place, actually, with many local cultures in its many regions, and a plethora of styles of cuisine, many of which would not be widely known.
We could argue forever about how authentic the food served in Chinese restaurants in various cities and countries is. That would be a separate thread really. Why don’t we stick to the question in the OP? A city satisfying the question in the OP would have to be one not mentioned in any of the entries below:
The answer would depend upon on defining how many expatriates it takes to constitute a “diaspora”. I’m assuming there are no Chinese restaurants in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (population in 2008 according to Wikipedia: 3,384,569.
Regarding the Chinese presence in Ethiopia, Wikipedia says:
There are lots of little gems serving great Chinese food like you could get in China, in the US. Not just in NYC and SF, either.
My guess is going to be Karaganda, Kazakhstan’s 4th largest city with 460,000 people. I am pretty sure there is no specifically Chinese restaurant there, and a quick google search doesn’t turn one up.
Addis Ababa does have at least one Chinese restaurant, actually. My friend just told me about eating there on Sunday.
Basically, (1) “Is there a Chinese restaurant in X?” and (2) “Is there a Chinese diaspora in X?” are distinct questions. There might be an individual, entrepreneuring chef from China who opens a Chinese restaurant in a foreign city where there otherwise is no Chinese community.
Besides that, I know several places in my neck of the woods that label themselves “Chinese restaurant” which are actually run by Vietnamese.
Hell, I know plenty of very good restaurants here in Tel Aviv run by Israeli Jews. A “Chinese restaurant” is a restaurant serving Chinese cuisine. The ethnicity of the people working there is utterly irrelevant.
True. But I wonder, though, how authentic some of these places really are.
Wait a second, so you’re telling me that authentic Chinese food doesn’t include French fries and fried mozzerella sticks? I am shocked, SHOCKED to hear that.
Yes, but the way I understood the OP’s question was that it somewhat implied the Chinese restaurant had to be run by people from China.
I would look to places where Chinese are, or were, despised. Little railroad town up in the high desert has a restaurant. On the side of the restaurant is a large sign clearly stating “All white help”. It doesn’t serve Chinese food, they don’t even serve Chinese people. Chinese people aren’t allowed anywhere near this little town.
It’s a legacy from the railroad building era, when the Chinese came over to work harder and cheaper than white people.
A.K.A. that country bordering China?
My guess would be where there are relatively large communities of Quechua and Aymará Indians in the Andes, but relatively free of outside influence. (Or does any such place exist anymore?)
Or perhaps the second-biggest city in Nunavut or Botswana.
There are at least two Chinese places in Francistown, Botswana - Mr Chang and Calabash.
Shanghai. There, they are just called “restaurants.” 
This happens with other ethnic themed restaurants. Here in the UK we have a massive market for Indian takeaways and restaurants. Except the Indian food served here is of the Anglicised variety. I dont just mean French fries and stuff, but the types and amounts of spices used are often vastly different to your traditional Indian fare. I dont know if this Anglicized food would be unrecognisable to your average Indian, but that there is an Anglicised twist to such establishments.
AFAICT, there are no Chinese restaurants in the entire province of Nunavut. It’s 20% of Canada! [sub]The fact that there are only 30,000 people spread out over 750,000 square miles might have something to do with it[/sub]
That depends quite a bit on the Chinese restaurant you go to.
There are a ton of very authentic Chinese restaurants in Chicago. Many in Chinatown will specialize in a particular regional cuisine and I know people from those regions who say it’s very close to what they ate at home.
Now if you’re eating at the one Chinese buffet in some small town I have no problem believing that the proprietor, while possibly Chinese and capable of producing accurate Chinese food, decided to alter the menu to American expectations.
In fact, even in a lot of the Chinese restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown they’ll try to steer you away from some of the menu items saying “you won’t like that”. 
You need to go several times until they recognize you and you and sort of earn their trust. It’s a funny kind of relationship.
Is there any wartime food rationing somewhere that prohibits the operation of restaurants? Aleppo?